In the past three months, we have seen attack after attack on the socialist and workers’ movement, all under the new watchword of the bourgeois order – “social cohesion”.
“Social cohesion” is the battle cry of the capitalists as they unleash hate speech laws to cripple anti-imperialist solidarity with Palestine. It is the cry of the capitalists as the state drags its feet for a week before charging a reactionary terrorist with the crime he committed. It is the slogan of the police as they riot in Sydney, cracking the skulls of peaceful demonstrators.
The crack down on the anti-Herzog protests, the new hate-speech laws, the attempted bombing attack in Perth. All of these attacks by the reactionary ruling order and the bourgeois response to them must be placed in the context of a growing offensive against the socialist movement. The period of “reaction of a special type” that characterised the post-Soviet world is coming to an end, and the resurgence of communism and the workers’ movement in turn means the resurgence of state anti-communism and an open policy of repression. The current culture of social pacifism which characterises the movement will no longer suffice.
This fact has been demonstrated in Sydney as the jackbooted thugs of the New South Wales police force slammed peaceful protesters into the ground for the crime of opposing the slaughter in Gaza. The state is not afraid to deploy its monopoly on force against the socialist and anti-imperialist movement, and it is certainly more adept at street organisation than the existing workers movement.
This is not to call for adventurist foolishness. Rather it is a sober analysis of the current state of the workers movement. But there are steps that can be taken to remedy this deficiency. In nearly every city excluding Melbourne there is no existing marshalling or rally defence service or grouping. Melbourne’s Community Marshalling Defence Service (CDMS), while marred by pacifism and activism, is a genuinely non-sectarian grouping which provides a valuable service to the social movements.
The left must start seriously investigating the formation of similar groups across the country to help defend ourselves against the growing threat of violence, and the threat of street terror like the attempted racist terror bombing in Perth. Real workers’ defence cannot be divided along petty sectarian lines. Rather, it must represent the greatest strength of the proletariat as a class: unity, and ability to engage in common action.
However, we cannot rely on street defence alone, even as the state apparatus looms over us armed with a hundred laws and injunctions. Here too, we must unite to defend ourselves and each other against the legal attacks that will be unleashed against us. In Queensland and New South Wales the hate speech laws banning the phrase “From the River to the Sea” are squarely aimed to attack not only the pro-Palestine movement but the socialist movement within it. If an activist does something the state government finds distasteful, they need only trawl through Instagram or Twitter to find the excuse needed to drag them through either a lengthy trail or a night or two in a cell to scare them off.
We need to build a common legal defence body, one that can draw in the greatest possible number of workers under its banner. The Partisan Defence Committee is the only workers defence legal campaigning organisation in Australia, and we invite all socialists and workers to involve themselves in it.
Solidarity,
The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation
PARTISAN! 